Smriti Irani, note why 'anti-nationals' in JNU say what they do

Despite its powerful feelings and delivery, there was something pitiable that accompanied Union minister Smriti Irani’s speech in Parliament.

After all, how often is it that the minister for education in a country stands up and discusses troubling pages from school textbooks in the way an opposition leader or critic of the government might have done?

If textbooks in India are preaching violence and hate under the guise of protest and critique, if the curriculum is producing students who call for the destruction of India without a thought for what it means to the lives of millions, then there is a problem.

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And if the concerned authority for addressing that problem talks about it with an air of seeming helplessness, or perhaps blame, then it lends itself to pity. Are things so bad that a government with a strong mandate, and its most articulate and forceful minister, shows the people a problem and not the steps towards its solution nearly two years after being in office?

Things are indeed bad, not only because of the reckless and insane manner in which a discourse of destructiveness has been constructed about India in general and Hindus in particular in academia in India and abroad, but also because of the way in which those who are trying to address it are floundering.

Consider two examples from America, before we return to the state of affairs in India.

First, a long and painstaking volunteer drive in California to raise money for engaging with higher education and changing the way Hinduism is taught in the American academy received a humiliating setback last week. The leaders of the organisation in question seemed completely unprepared for the severe and vicious attack that came upon them from pretty much the entire body of South Asia studies faculty in North America.

It was telling that not one faculty member from the institution they were trying to be so generous towards spoke up for them, publicly at least. It was also telling that they have not offered until now a precise, factual and effective response to the many harsh criticisms that were made of them by faculty and students. Money can't buy you love, or a more truthful discourse, apparently.

Second, the California Board of Education issued a new draft document last year on how history and social sciences will be taught in school for the next decade. It was marginally less racist and outdated than the earlier textbooks that had caused an outrage in 2006. But the draft is still far from where it ought to be, given the persistent domination of the Hinduphobic South Asia studies paradigm on the entire field of history.

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The community was given several months to comment on the draft and request changes. A group of South Asia studies scholars presented one crisp document with their demands and observations (including some reasonable positions but also some extraordinary leaps of fancy like calling for "India" to be replaced with "South Asia" altogether in the syllabus).

On the Hindu side, there are about four community organisations that have each presented their own extensive list of suggested changes. Some organisations have taken the inputs and supports of professional scholars sympathetic to their cause, others haven’t. In any case, the contrast is a lesson in itself. The situation looks not like a debate among academics, but as a fight between academics and non-academics, and guess who will have more credibility in the end.

There are lessons from these cases for the minister and for everyone who knows there's a problem in education and wishes to see it change. Changing the academic consensus requires academic leadership and smart engagement with one's intellectual opponents, not political posturing before one's own followers outside academia, and certainly not arrogant exclusion of academicians from the issue.

Unfortunately, I do not see the situation in India being very different as of now despite a far more urgent situation than in America. The intense and emotional upheaval that has taken place in the last few weeks in India about events in UoH and JNU has made the whole country aware of a growing reality in campus culture: the complete breakdown of any connection between the exalted high-theory curriculum and the cultural sensibilities of the ordinary people of India (and not just some hegemonic Hindutva elites).

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There is a reason that there is widespread disgust among the people about what is being taught and done in schools and colleges in the name of alternative narratives and fighting Hindutva and other excuses. After two decades of bomb blasts and terrorist massacres of Indians in general and daily doses of insult and propaganda in the media against Hindus in particular, no one feels like laughing off campus "dissidence" as mere eccentricity or experimentation as they might have in an earlier time.

This problem, however, cannot be fixed by political or administrative solutions, which is, unfortunately, the way politicians and administrators perhaps tend to think of it. The term "anti-national" might make perfect sense to police, government officials, parents, and everyone else who thinks a certain way, but it will not encourage the people who are infected with the kind of extreme delusions campus culture has descended to introspect and change.

On this point, Smriti Irani certainly took a correct approach in her speech by depicting students not as an innate threat, but as human beings who deserve compassion and more than political skullduggery around their lives and sadly, deaths.

But there is no sign until now that the government understands why these alleged "anti-nationals" in places like JNU say what they do. There still seems to be a paternalistic perception of student activism as a form of "neglecting studies" and doing politics instead.

There has to be a recognition first of all that this sort of activism is an emanation of the sort of studies that are being done, not just in India, but all around the world, in the fields of humanities and social sciences. These are fields of study that attract and nurture young women and men who believe there is something wrong with the world, who feel pain for the oppression of others, and want to do something about it.

The problem, however, is that there is virtually no one telling them inside the academy, or even outside, exactly what is wrong with the way they are doing it. For example, they will not understand it all if you tell them their anti–Durga rhetoric is "anti-national." They think you are imposing your hegemony on them just as the imaginary Durga did on the real subaltern Mahishasura. It is bizarre, yes, but as long as you give them the excuse they need to stay in their worldview, they will not change, learn or grow.

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And to learn how to teach them, you must first learn about what they are thinking too, and not presume anything about them. If education is not fixed in the next few years either because of the vicious identity politics of the Opposition or the naïve complacence and self-congratulatory patriotism of the ruling party, the India that will be left, whether it calls itself some great Bharat or some other multiple pluralistic South Asian post-nationality, will be robbed of the ability of one human being to understand the life and sorrows of another.

You cannot resist consumerism, individualism, the dangers of globalisation, for example, if you destroy what is left of the cultural resources that kept you sane and human relatively speaking in the face of five centuries of colonisation and dehumanisation. Alternatively, you cannot resist what you might call "anti-national" forces if you mummify culture and try to ram it down with state machinery on campuses where students are seeking to explore and learn what is right for themselves.

There are some simple lessons that those in the government or in educational activism need to draw. Just think of the parable of the man who lost his coin in one street corner but went to search for it in another one simply because there the light was better. Similarly, the answers to the mess in the "India story" in academia will not be found anywhere except inside the minds of students, faculty, and scholars, professional and self-taught.

If you wish to change academia, please do not throw insults, violence, or even self-congratulatory patronage at it. Speak to those who will spend their lives in this world, students and teachers, and learn to listen to them too.